With an increasing quantity of merchants participating in sales promotions, sales promotion means used by the merchants become increasingly abundant. For example, there are discount promotions (such as passing out coupons), card promotions (such as an annual card, a gold card, and a bonus point card), premium sales, rebate promotions, and the like. Passing out various coupons (such as a cash coupon, a special coupon, a redemption coupon, and a discount coupon) to customers is a relatively common sales promotion manner.
A transaction method is provided in the prior art, where in the method, a user may use preference information from different preference-offering parties. In one embodiment, the method includes receiving, by a point-of-sale terminal, a customer identifier (for example, an account associated with a payment card) and to-be-used preference information during a transaction, and sending the customer identifier and the preference information to a preference-offering party corresponding to the preference information, determining, by the preference-offering party, whether the preference information is valid, and returning the valid preference information to the point-of-sale terminal, and presenting, by the point-of-sale terminal to the user, a payment solution (including the valid preference information, a sum of money required using the preference, and the like) corresponding to the valid preference information, and receiving a payment solution selected by the user, so as to complete the transaction.
In a process of implementing the present disclosure, the inventor finds that the prior art has at least the following problems.
When a user uses preferences provided by multiple preference-offering parties and there are multiple types of valid preference information that are determined by the preference-offering parties, a point-of-sale terminal may display multiple payment solutions that are separately corresponding to the various types of valid preference information, however, a most preferential payment solution may not be in these payment solutions. As a result, the user may suffer an economic loss to some extent when these payment solutions are used.